Legacies

January 21, 2018 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons, Video available

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 14, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Despite his life being taken from him early, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. left behind a legacy of human/civil rights advances and a strong call toward justice. What will the legacy of this generation of Unitarian Universalists be?

Reading
– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

Sermon

I’d like to begin the sermon this morning with another passage from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“I am sure that most of you have read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled “Rip Van Winkle.”

The one thing that we usually remember about the story is that Rip Van Winkle slept twenty years.

But there is another point in that little story that is almost completely overlooked. It was the sign in the end, from which Rip went up in the mountain for his long sleep.

When Rip Van Winkle went up into the mountain, the sign had a picture of King George the Third of England.

When he came down twenty years later, the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first president of the United States.

When Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington – and looking at the picture he was amazed – he was completely lost. He knew not who he was.

And this reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that Rip slept twenty years, but that he slept through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain, a revolution was taking place that at points would change the course of history – and Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep.

Yes, he slept through a revolution.

And one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands.

They end up sleeping through a revolution.”

Dr. King’s legacy is that he led a revolution in civil and human rights. Though incomplete, the gains he was able to bring about by waking people up have made real differences in real people’s lives every since.

And though as is clear from current events in our news, we still have far, far to go Ð though there have been efforts every since to curtail and find ways around the civil rights gains he and his movement brought about, still, I believe he led a powerful and peaceful revolution.

And I believe that if our democratic laws and institutions hold up against the assault they are currently under, we may be living in a time when the potential for another powerful and peaceful revolution is brewing.

So we, each of us, must decide what our legacy may be.

Will we stay awake for this revolution?

All around us, it seems that a sleeping giant is awakening. Disturbed and dismayed by the racist, classist, misogynistic, bigoted behavior and policy making of so many of our political and other leaders, oppressed peoples and their allies are engaging at a level not seen since perhaps the days of Dr. King’s movement.

Now, I want to pause here to say that I know that we likely have folks here today with a wide spectrum of political points of view. We likely have folks who would prefer not to hear about politics and public policy from the pulpit, and I can understand that. I can understand the desire for spiritual nourishment during worship and I return to the subject later.

And yet, I also feel compelled to talk about what is happening in our society at large on this Sunday before Martin Luther King Day because our mission that we say together every Sunday states that we gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice.

Our Unitarian Universalist principles say that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations; The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large; The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

So, for me, I cannot, as a Unitarian Universalist minister, feel that I am living out that mission and fulfilling our principles, let alone providing religious leadership, and yet ignore racist statements like the also ugly and vulgar one Mr. Trump made just three days ago, much less the policy making being attempted both administratively and through legislation that has the real potential to harm people.

For me, this is a spiritual matter.

There is a revolution brewing that sides with love, that recognizes we are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny”, as Dr. King said.

There is a revolution brewing that is congruent with our religious values, and I can’t sleep through it without damaging my spirit, my very soul.

All around us Indivisible chapters and many, many other groups, are making phone calls, organizing town hall meetings and conducting visits to government officials offices to resist harmful legislation.

All around us, disparate human rights movements are joining forces like never before to build more power for demanding justice.

All around us, committed folks are identifying ways to counter the forces of hatred and tribalism with love and communalism.

The “me too” movement that Meg will be talking about next Sunday resulted in millions of women and also many men sharing their stories of sexual harassment and assault, powerfully demonstrating just how large this problem is.

In response, 300 prominent women in the entertainment industry formed the “Time’s Up” movement to combat sexual assault and harassment through a legal defense fund set up especially to help less privileged persons, advancing legislation to combat harassment and through several other initiatives. The women wearing black you may have noticed at the Golden Globe Awards, did so at the request of the Time’s Up leadership to raise awareness about these issues.

In special elections in Virginia, Alabama and elsewhere, people of color, especially African Americans, younger people, and women, particularly single women, voted in huge numbers for candidates that ran against the forces of oppression.

In Virginia, such candidates swept all of the statewide offices.

Also in Virginia, an openly transgendered female defeated an anti-LGBTQ incumbent to become the first openly transgendered person to be elected to a state legislature in the United States.

Virginians also elected the first two Latina women to their state house, as well the first Asian American woman and the first openly lesbian woman.

In Alabama, Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore, a vocal anti-LGBTQ bigot, who had also made racist statements and stood accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with several women, some of whom had been under-aged at the time. <> Doug Jones is a former federal prosecutor who put away the Ku Klux Klan perpetrators of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four African American girls.

He also has a son who is openly gay and who attended his swearing in to the U.S. Senate by none other than Mike Pence.

I’ll admit that I enjoyed watching that.

Immensely.

Folks, these are the seeds of a powerful, peaceful revolution, if our democratic institutions stand. I fear that those who are trying to undermine those institutions might well heed the words of John F. Kennedy – “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible”, he said, “will make violent revolution inevitable.”

So, I believe the possibility for that powerful and peaceful revolution is upon us, and that our religious principles, values and mission are calling us to stay awakened for it.

But how do we do that? Especially when it can seem like there is this constant barrage of anger and conflict coming at us and so many issues to address that it can become so tiring and seem so overwhelming. How do we avoid freezing up, retreating to the comforts of our homes and families and, like Rip Van Winkle, sleeping through the revolution?

Well, let me be the first to admit that I don’t have all of the answers. I admit that I feel like hiding in my living room with Wayne, my now three dogs and a glass of chardonnay myself sometimes.

But I think it can sometimes help with the sense of being overwhelmed, the constant barrage blaring from our televisions, to get engaged in some way. Taking some sort of active role can help restore a sense of at least some personal agency when our world starts feeling so tumultuous.

I know many of you are already actively working for justice and to improve our communities and our world in so many terrific ways, and I am so thankful to you for all that you do. I hope that it brings you a sense of fulfillment and spiritual nourishment.

And if you are not as engaged as you might like, know that you do not have to become an out-front, outspoken social justice or political activist to be a part of revolutionizing our society for the better.

There are great organizations with which to volunteer. You can help register people to vote. You can make a difference just by showing up at events like the Martin Luther King Day Celebration tomorrow or the Women’s March next Saturday.

There are all kinds of ways to get involved with some our social action and community support activities here at the church. Just talk with the nice folks at the social action table after a service sometime to find out more.

You can also support or get involved with any number of our national Unitarian Universalist groups, such as “Love Resists”, which works to resist criminalization of people of color, migrant, Muslim, LGBTQ and other targeted communities. This is just one example of the many opportunities you can find out about by going to www.uua.org on the web.

OK, public service announcement over now.

Once we each have found our way to get engaged, I think the other way we stay awake is to take care of ourselves spiritually, emotionally and physically.

Some of you have heard me say some of this before, but it bears repeating in times like these.

Building a revolution, a true legacy of change for the better, is long-term and can be challenging sometimes, and it is easy to get burnt out or even collapse into cynicism or despair.

That makes it even more important if you have a spiritual practice that nourishes and sustains you to create the time to engage in it on a regular basis and to think about picking one up if you do not currently have a spiritual practice.

Meditating, praying, chanting, singing, knitting, simply sitting in quiet contemplation, being in nature, it doesn’t have to be anything complicated or even overtly religious as long as it soothes your soul.

Based on recent personal experience, I recommend getting a new puppy.

Puppy breath as a spiritual practice is the greatest.

Identify where you experience beauty and spend some time there whether it is by the ocean, a creek, a river a lake, the mountains or in an arts museum. Make time for beauty in your life.

And let yourself experience joy. Whether it comes from playing with your kids or your kitties or both, making music or art or whatever brings you joy, we need the experience of joy in our lives to sustain and enliven our spirits.

Every Sunday, we say that we come from a long tradition of seeing a spark of the divine in every person.

I like to think of that as a light that is unique to each of us. I encourage you to tend to that light in these ways so that you can shine it out most brightly to better our world in the way that only you can.

Combined together, our unique lights and those of so many others working for justice and a more sustainable world can radiate out into that world and fuel a powerful and peaceful revolution.

We are witnessing forces of racism and bigotry emboldened in our society right now. Almost as terribly, we are also witnessing leaders from across the political spectrum who are failing to speak out forcefully against this and are thereby complicit in it.

However, in response, we are also witnessing a potential revolution based in compassion, community and solidarity.

My beloveds, our faith is calling us not to sleep through that revolution.

Let our legacy be that we awakened and became the revolution.

May each of our sparks of the divine unite and shine brightly together with many, many others to light our way.

Amen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

How to invite changes in your life

January 7, 2018 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 7, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

How are those resolutions? Still holding strong? Do you make the same ones every year? What might some good ways be of sneaking change past that mule that wakes up and resists everything different?

Reading
“The Intuitive Body”
Wendy Palmer

Our compost pile needs to be turned over. And at the right time, this rich mixture of broken dreams, pain, and fear and the fermented wisdom of our past seasons is spread upon the ground to enrich the soil and nourish our new crop of insights, ideas, and visions. Birth, growth, change, fruition, death, decay, and rebirth lead to more growth in a continuous, ongoing cycle. All of this happens naturally, whether we like it or not. It is our choice, our human prerogative, to open to life, to appreciate it, be awed by it …. or not. The choice is ours.

Sermon

Here we are at the beginning of 2018, and many of you came to the Burning Bowl service and thought about what you wanted to let go of and what you might want to call into your life. Lots of us use the time after Christmas as a time of reflection and evaluation. Who would we like to be? What would we like to become as the new year blossoms?

Some people still make New Year resolutions. The Zumba classes are full, it’s hard to get a free lane at the pool, people are working on themselves. Most diets last 72 hours, so those are mostly done with. I have a friend who had the same resolution every year when she was young: Grow out her nails, lose weight, get a tan.

I fell into the habit of waiting for a resolution to appear. These resolutions were short but deep. “Be quiet” was one of the first ones. “How can I do that?” I thought. I talk for a living. Yet, as I danced with that thought throughout the year, I realized that there were lots of situations in which I could choose quiet. In groups, I used to be what people call “early dominant.” I would speak my ideas easily, have an opinion about everything, jump into every debate. As it turned out, I didn’t have to express every opinion. I didn’t have to start every discussion. Being quiet honored the other people in the group.

The next one was “Tell the truth.” Well, I’d always told the truth. However, as with the “be quiet” resolution, I found ways in which this idea could have room to grow. While being truthful with other people, I sometimes lied to myself, telling myself something didn’t matter when it did, or maintaining that I was fine when I wasn’t. There were a lot of little lies that smoothed over social situations. I learned to say “Oh yes, that touched me in a way I’m seldom touched.” I was glad when that year was over!

Last year’s was “drink more,” but that didn’t add up to much.

One of the problems with making resolutions is that we humans are made up of many layers: out childhood training, our interests and passions, all of the “shoulds” that rule our thinking, and then, as some wise ones taught, the layers which are below the level of consciousness. Those are the layers from which dreams come, where the elements that drive us without our awareness. Those are the places where our shadow side lives, where the qualities of our personality we aren’t happy with reside. If someone is constantly self-sabotaging, making choices that mess up their lives, where does that come from? St. Paul, in one of his letters, wrote “I do the things I don’t want to do, and I don’t do the things I want to do.” Well said.

Let me talk to you about two elements in the unconscious which operate in your as you try to make changes in your life. One is the critic. People have different names for the Inner Critic, but we all have experience with it. That’s the voice that growls “You can’t dance, why do you even try?” “You look bad in these colors, I can’t believe you thought you could pull this off.” “Why did you just say that to your boss, don’t you realize how it sounded?”

As soon as you start trying to make changes, the critic starts grinding on you. “Why even try?” It lays out all the times you’ve tried to do something before and failed. One teacher suggested that you take your critic and give them a class room with stadium seating and fill it with brilliant UT students who will nod and ooh and ahh and take notes as they speak eloquently about what a loser you are. Meanwhile they are out of your way and occupied.

The other element that awakens when you try to make changes is the resistance. I picture this as the Inner Mule. “I must eat more vegetables,” you say, and the mule wakes up and says “I want pizza!” I was very glad to find a way, not to make change, but to invite change into your life. Author Wendy Palmer is an Aikido master.

Try on different qualities. Not the “should” ones, but something that, when you say its name, you feel some good energy and interest in your body. Not “less of this or that,” but invite in. The way to invite this quality into your life is to wonder rather than to will.

Softness, gentleness, courage, awareness, openness, a sense of enough, playfulness, imagination, confidence

How would this work? Once you’ve chosen a quality to work with, just ask yourself in various moments “What would this moment feel like with more _________”

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Burning Bowl

December 31, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
December 31, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We begin the year by thinking about elements in our lives which are doing us a disservice. We whisper these things into flash paper and burn them together, scattering the ashes to the wind.

Reading

Burning the Old Year
Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Christmas Pageant

December 24, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 24, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Our Annual Christmas Pageant with costumes provided for Angels, shepherds, and more as we hear and perform the famous story and sing beautiful carols.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Jesus’ Grandmothers

December 18, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 17, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Lots of us are studying our DNA these days, finding out about ancestors. Who are the forebears of Rabbi Jesus, and what are their stories?

Call to Worship
William F. Schulz

This is the mission of our faith:
To teach the fragile art of hospitality;
To revere both the critical mind and the generous heart;
To prove that diversity need not mean divisiveness;
And to witness to all that we must hold the whole world in our hands.

Reading
Richard Fewkes

We lift up our hearts in thanks for the sun and the dawn which we did not create. For the moon and the evening which we did not make. For food which we plant but cannot grow. For friends and loved ones we have not earned and cannot buy. For this gathered company which welcomes us as we are from where ever we have come. For all our free churches that keep us human and encourage us in our quest for beauty, Truth, and love. For all things that come to us as gifts of being from sources beyond our selves. Gifts of life and love and friendship. We lift up our hearts in thanks this day.

Sermon

Some people call the genealogies in the Bible “the begats,” and they are hard to read. Why would I want to be reading you one? Well, because there are stories embedded in this one. Every name has a story (same with each of our genealogies) and I thought you might be interested in these. Women are hardly ever mentioned in these. This is the genealogy of Rabbi Jesus. Count on your fingers the women in this as I read it.

Matthew 1
THE GENEALOGY OF JESUS

1 A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:

2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

3 Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram,

4 Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon,

5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed,whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse,

6 and Jesse the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,

…. then 24 generations without the mention of a woman, then …

16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

The usual genealogy in the Bible is a list of fathers. The mothers are rarely mentioned. In this genealogy of Jesus, there are a several items of interest. One is that it’s a list of Joseph’s forbears, which leads you to believe that the Virgin Birth didn’t mean the same thing to Matthew that it does to people today, but that’s another sermon. The second unusual thing is that there are four grandmothers mentioned in Jesus’ list of forbears: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah. Not only are they mentioned, but they are women with interesting stories, stories I would like to tell you today.

Matthew wrote this genealogy in a time when the rules for women were narrow and mean. There wasn’t much women who weren’t married to kings or emperors could do to distinguish themselves in the Greek and Roman cultures. The most you could go for was to be really good, stay under the radar, do what you were supposed to do, and not get yourself in trouble. It was easy to get in trouble. If you got pregnant without being married, if you didn’t get pregnant when you were married, if you got raped, if your husband died, all of those things were bad, and they were your fault.

Were these grandmothers of Jesus exemplary church ladies, following all the rules to the letter and making cautious moves so their lives could be free of turbulence and pleasing to those around them? NO. These women did not do the nice thing, pleasing those around them. What they did would now be called risk-taking. Doing the higher right thing, rather than the nice thing. Good rather than nice. These women embody the difference between being good and being nice.

TAMAR

Tamar’s story is in the book of Genesis (38:6-30). It was the custom of the day, if a man died leaving no children, his brother would marry the widow as one of his wives and have children with her to be counted as the children of his dead brother. That way the brother’s line would continue. Tamar’s husband was one of the sons of Judah. Judah was the one the whole nation was named after later.

Judah was a brother of Joseph, one of the ones who sold Joseph to the Egyptians and then told their father that Joseph had been eaten by a wild animal. They gave their father the coat of many colors, dipped in animal blood, as evidence. It wouldn’t have fooled CSI, but it was enough for Jacob, their father.

Anyway, Judah moved away and married, and had some sons and the eldest son married a woman named Tamar. The story says he was wicked in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord killed him. Judah told his next son, Onan, to have intercourse with her and make some children. He spilled his seed on the ground in front of her, refusing to make children with her. The god in the story gets mad at him for that, so he died too. We still have people whose beliefs about solo sex are shaped by interpreting this story wrong, and “Onanism” should be a term for refusing to do the right thing, instead of a term for having sex by yourself. Whew.

This is awkward to talk about, but that’s the scriptures for you. The third son was still too young to fulfill the brotherly obligation, so Judah told Tamar to go back to her father’s house and live there as a widow. He worried that the third son would die too, as it seemed to him that some kind of doom was emanating from Tamar

11 Judah then said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, “Live as a widow in your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up.” For he thought, “He may die too, just like his brothers.” So Tamar went to live in her father’s house.

12 After a long time Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had recovered from his grief, he went up to Timnah, to the men who were shearing his sheep, and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went with him.

13 When Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is on his way to Timnah to shear his sheep,”

14 she took off her widow’s clothes, covered herself with a veil to disguise herself, and then sat down at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that, though Shelah had now grown up, she had not been given to him as his wife.

15 When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face.

16 Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, “Come now, let me sleep with you.”

“And what will you give me to sleep with you?” she asked.

17 “I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” he said.

“Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?” she asked.

18 He said, “What pledge should I give you?”

“Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand,” she answered. So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him.

19 After she left, she took off her veil and put on her widow’s clothes again.

20 Meanwhile Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite in order to get his pledge back from the woman, but he did not find her.

21 He asked the men who lived there, “Where is the shrine prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?”

“There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here,” they said.

22 So he went back to Judah and said, “I didn’t find her. Besides, the men who lived there said, ‘There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here.’ “

23 Then Judah said, “Let her keep what she has, or we will become a laughingstock. After all, I did send her this young goat, but you didn’t find her.”

24 About three months later Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result she is now pregnant.”

Judah said, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!”

25 As she was being brought out, she sent a message to her father-in-law. “I am pregnant by the man who owns these,” she said. And she added, “See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.”

26 Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not sleep with her again.

27 When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb.

28 As she was giving birth, one of them put out his hand; so the midwife took a scarlet thread and tied it on his wrist and said, “This one came out first.”

29 But when he drew back his hand, his brother came out, and she said, “So this is how you have broken out!” And he was named Perez.

30 Then his brother, who had the scarlet thread on his wrist, came out and he was given the name Zerah. She was good, not nice.

According to the Book of Ruth, this Peretz becomes the great great great great grandfather of Boaz, who is the great grandfather of David.

RAHAB

Rahab was a prostitute who lived in Jericho. The Israelites wanted to conquer that town, and their commander, Joshua, sent two spies to look it over.

Joshua 2
RAHAB AND THE SPIES

1 Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.

2 The king of Jericho was told, “Look! Some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.”

3 So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab:

“Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”

4 But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from.

5 At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, the men left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.”

6 (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.)

7 So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut. …

She made a deal with the spies for the life of her family. “please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign

13 that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death.”

14 “Our lives for your lives!” the men assured her. “If you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the LORD gives us the land.”

15 So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall.

16 Now she had said to them, “Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way

21 “Agreed,” she replied. “Let it be as you say.” So she sent them away and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window.

She and her family were spared when Joshua and his troops took the city. She was good to her family, compromised herself for them and saved them.

RUTH

Ruth was a foreigner, from Moab. She married the son of Naomi, who was from Judah, Israel. Naomi’s husband died, then her two sons. She told Ruth and her other daughter-in-law Orpah (where Oprah got her name) to go back to their mothers and find other men to marry.

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.

17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Isn’t it interesting that the words many people say at their weddings were originally said between a woman and her mother-in-law?

They got to Judah at the time of the barley harvest, and Ruth went to work in the field of a near kinsman Naomi pointed out to her. He wasn’t next in line for her, but second. Ruth reaped in the fields, and he noticed her. He offered her protection and food, and she stayed with his folks in the field. When the harvest was over, Naomi told her to go to the threshing floor where the men slept and lie down with him. He did not reject her. His mom was Rahab, remember from the genealogy? He was thrilled, but wanted to do the honorable thing, so he went and negotiated with the next in line so that he could take her as his wife. They made it happen the way they wanted it to, and she gave birth to Obed, King David’s grandfather.

BATHSHEBA

King David saw her bathing on the roof, and she was beautiful. Uriah, her husband, was off fighting David’s war. He called her to the palace and she slept with him. She found out she was pregnant, and David called her husband home for R and R. Uriah refused to go home while the war was still being fought. He slept at the gate of the city with his some of his men, like an athlete who won’t shave until the championship is won. David got him drunk and tried to send him home, but he slept with his men at the gate again. Then David placed him in the fight so he would get killed. He was killed, and Bathsheba mourned him, but she went to the palace and became David’s wife, and bore a son. The story says God was mad at David, so the son got sick and died. One of Bathsheba’s next sons was one of Jesus’ grandfathers.

What are these women doing in this genealogy? Commentators have worked for years trying to figure out what they had in common. They all made choices that were risky. They gathered up all the dice and rolled them, changing their lives. Life pushed them one way and another. Loved ones were killed, but they chose life. They put themselves in danger of rejection and harm. They chose life. Especially Ruth and Tamar made a leap, instead of subsiding into resignation and bitterness over their fate. They didn’t shrug and say, well, I got dealt a bad hand, I’m just unlucky, or I’ve been done wrong. They took what power they had and used it to move their lives forward.

The gospel writer is telling the story of Messiah, the Redeemer. In the beginning of his story he embeds five women who chose to do a brave thing, even though it could get them into trouble. Is there something about redemption that takes guts? That takes a willingness to face rejection? Foreigners, a prostitute, a beauty who married King David, but is named in the genealogy as “wife of Uriah,” and Mary, the young woman who was with child before she had been with a man, yet her baby’s lineage is traced through her husband. Mystery comes into the world, redemption comes into the world with its own morality, with its own sense of the good that plays in all shades in between black and white. These are family stories that would not play well in some sweet Pleasantville. They are real families, real choices, real risks, and we learn that you never know how redemption will come to the world .

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Grace

December 10, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 10, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

If our actions are our only true belongings, as we discussed last week, what about the bad things we’ve done?

Call to Worship
– Rabindranath Tagore

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain
but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield
but to my own strength.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant that I may not be a coward,
feeling Your mercy in my success alone;

But let me find the grasp of Your hand in my failure.

Reading
– Frederick Buechner

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks. A good night’s sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

My Actions are My Only True Belongings

December 3, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 3, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

As the days grow darker, nature’s energy goes to the roots of growing things. The five remembrances of Buddhism direct our attention to the radical (meaning root) question of what in life has lasting value.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Call to worship
-The Rev. Barbara Wells

O Spinner, Weaver, of our lives,
Your loom is love.
May we who are gathered here
be empowered by that love
to weave new patterns of Truth
and Justice into a web of life that is strong,
beautiful, and everlasting.

Readings:

The Summer Day
-Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

When Death Comes
-Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Modern Families

November 26, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson & Laine Young
November 26, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Thanksgiving often brings to mind images of a nuclear family gathered together around the table enjoying dinner. But the reality is that the families we choose to come together with at this time of year take many shapes. In this all-ages service, we hear from several church members about their diverse families and how they are thankful this season.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Elijah

November 20, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 19, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

The job of preachers and prophets has often been described as “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Elijah’s story tracks his trials, tribulations and triumphs.

Sermon
These are notes only, and may bear resemblance somewhat to what is said. Click the play button to listen.

Ahab was king for 22 years, following a run of kings with shorter reigns, one for only 7 days. He was wicked, and to make it worse, he married Jezebel, who worshipped the god Baal, and he began to worship Baal as well, instead of the God of Israel.

Elijah shows up in the story telling the king that there won’t be any more rain in the land until the prophet says there will be. He went away then to hide in a ravine east of the Jordan River. God sent ravens to bring him bread and meat in the morning and again in the evening, and he drank from a nearby brook.

The brook soon dried up, as there had been no rain, and God said “go to this town and you’ll meet a widow. She will feed you.” He came to the town and saw a woman gathering sticks. He asked her for some water, and for some bread. She told him she only had a little flour and a little olive oil left. Her plan was to make a fire with the sticks, mix the oil and flour, make a bit of bread for her and for her son, and then they would die. Just make me a little loaf too, and then go do what you plan to do.He told her that her food would not run out until the rains came again. He came to live with the woman and her son, and they had enough to eat every day, since the flour and oil did not run out.

One day her son grew ill. He got worse and worse, and finally he stopped breathing, and she was angry with Elijah. Have you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?” she cried. I don’t know what sin she was talking about. Elijah said “Give me your son,” and he took him up to the upper room where he was staying, laid him on the bed, and cried out to God, along the lines of “How could you let this tragedy befall this woman who took me in and fed me? He laid himself out on the boy three times, and said “Let his life return to him!” The boy began to breathe again. He carried the boy downstairs and said “Look, your son is alive!”

Three years of drought passed, and then the Lord told Elijah to go to Ahab and bring the rain again. He met Ahab on the road, and the king said “There you are, troubler of Israel.” The trouble is because of you and your evil ways, O King, said Elijah. This is an instructive moment, I think. When the Black Lives Matter protesters disrupt a rally or a highway, some people tsk at them and say they are making things worse for their cause. Disrupting is so rude. Disrupting is what prophets do, though. It’s the only tool of the powerless. The wrongs being done are the cause of the trouble, not the prophetic voices. No one likes a prophet, though. They are a lot of trouble. They demand change.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Checking out, Falling back, Overwhelmed

November 12, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 12, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

At times it all gets to be too much. How do we learn to rest rather than quitting?

Call to Worship
Apache blessing

May the sun bring you new energy by day,
May the moon softly restore you by night,
May the rain wash away your worries,
May the breeze blow new strength into your being,
May you walk gently through the world
and know its beauty all the days of your life.

Reading
My Help Is in the Mountain
by Nancy Wood

My help is in the mountain
Where I take myself to heal
The earthly wounds
That people give to me.
I find a rock with sun on it
And a stream where the water runs gentle
And the trees which one by one
give me company.
So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.

Sermon
These are notes only, and may bear resemblance somewhat to what is said.

One of my friends on social media said that she couldn’t feel anything after the shooting at the church in Sutherland Springs. All the usual outrage was posted, all the usual moments of silence and offers of thoughts and prayers went up, but she couldn’t muster any emotional response. So many of us are approaching that level of emotional fatigue. As Masha Gessen writes in the Washington Post, “we have settled into a constant, low level dread: a state in which one can function, but can hardly be creative or look into the future.” Yet we sing:

(sings) -by Holly Near
I am open
and I am willing
for to be hopeless
would feel so strange.

It dishonors
those who’ve gone before us,
so lift me up
to the light of change.

When I read about my friend who couldn’t feel anything, I was reminded of the study I read as a psych major about learned helplessness. I don’t want to describe the studies to you, as they are upsetting, but the conclusion was that if you randomly hurt a being for long enough without giving them any way to influence their situation, they will give up and surrender to the pain. After they give up, you can give them a way out of the hurtful situation and they won’t take it. They’ve lost their sense of being able to help themselves.

Many of us are feeling that way, faced with implacable politicians in thrall to the big donations of the gun lobby. We see former NY Mayor Bloomburg fighting, we see the Giffords fighting, and sometimes their efforts seem useless. Many of us are overwhelmed by the actions of people who seem to be ignoring or ignorant of the Constitution. We wake up in the morning like Captain Picard, asking for the Damage Report.

I’ve heard many of you say that you are having a hard year. You have been shocked, depressed, feeling constantly emotionally battered. Some sprang into action in the Resistance. Some woke up sick every morning, some stopped watching the news, trying to live by just paying attention to health, family, work. But we get tired, and still we struggle to sing

(sings)
I am open
and I am willing
for to be hopeless
would feel so strange.

It dishonors
those who’ve gone before us,
so lift me up
to the light of change.

We get tired. We fight and fight, we make phone calls and write emails, we work on grass roots politics. When I got to Spartanburg SC I was 26; There was no women’s shelter. I went to a meeting about starting a shelter. “I’m too tired, said the social workers. “I’m not tired, I said, and we went to work. We started with people who were willing to shelter women and their children in their own homes, private safe homes. I remember arranging pick ups for women in parks, at the mall, at the police station. I remember one woman yelling “DRIVE!” when she thought she saw her husband behind us. He had a shot gun, she said. I was president of it for four years. During that time we hired a director and rented an old house in an undisclosed location. Now the organization has a huge budget and helps hundreds of people. After four years I was tired. Burned out. I hadn’t known that I could say no to being president. I got so I couldn’t even open an envelope from them. I had forgotten to rest. So I quit.

That is the shadow side of justice work. What do we do with that? It makes us want to withdraw, turn our head, give up, if we have the option to.

Contemplative RC author Thomas Merton writes:

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

Last spring I was felled by something that could not be influenced by wit, intelligence, or force of will. For months I just had to go through it, one day at a time. I love consulting the I Ching, a Chinese book of wisdom. It has been one of my wisdom companions since I was in high school. When I consulted it about the infection in my hip appliance, it said things were not going to go the way I thought they should go. It said I should not have goals, but instead I should give all my attention to process. Just do what I was supposed to do, day by day. That has been valuable in fighting a sense of despair or overwhelm.

(sings)
I am open
and I am willing
for to be hopeless
would feel so strange.

It dishonors
those who’ve gone before us,
so lift me up
to the light of change.

I know some folks who work in politics. Several of them embody the word “Steady,” which I’m reading about in Dan Rather’s new book. Their candidate wins, and they nod and go back to work on what’s next. They lose, and they nod and go back to work on what’s next. I admire that. It is more in some people’s nature to ride the rejoice and lament roller coaster. We need all of us to do what’s next. Then rest, then have a party with our friends, then come back and do what’s next.

Burn out is the shadow side of a big long struggle. The music this morning has been metaphorical, about wanting to be numb, not wanting to feel the tiredness, the overwhelm, the frazzle. It’s ok to rest. You don’t have to keep pushing 24 hours a day. There is no need for guilt if you fall back from the front lines, if you take an afternoon to have fun, if you find a way to laugh and dance in the midst of struggle. As Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” The postlude will be an opportunity to laugh and dance to a statement of truth. Sometimes we want to be sedated. We look that feeling in the face, we look the shadow side in the face and acknowledge its truth. To stay open and willing, we must pay more attention to processes than goals, faithfully stay in the struggle, rest, and we must not forget the joy.

FIRE
– by Judy Brown

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.

Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.

A fire grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

All are called

November 6, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
November 5, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We tend to think of ministers as answering a calling, but all of us are called in some way to make a difference in our world. How will we live out our mission next?

Call to worship

First UU Church of Austin is an intentionally hospitable community where:

All people are treated with respect and dignity
All people of goodwill are welcomed
People are supported in times of joy and need
People find connection with one another in fellowship
We are fully engaged and generous with time, treasure and talent
We invite people of goodwill to find a spiritual home with us
We engage as UUs in public life

First UU Church of Austin nourishes souls and transforms lives by:

Engaging and supporting one another in spiritual practice and growth
Providing worship, programs and activities that awaken meaning and transcendence
Providing a caring, supportive and safe place to rekindle the spirit

First UU Church of Austin witnesses to justice in our personal lives and beyond, by:

Practicing liberal religious values in the public arena
Empowering all people to access the richness of life
Providing leadership to the greater UUA community to expand the reach of our movement
Partnering with the interfaith community to live our shared values

Reading

-Dawna Markova

“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which came to me as a seed goes to the next as a blossom and that which came to me as a blossom, goes on as fruit.”

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Those who have gone before

October 30, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 29, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Using an Appalachian practice brought from Cornwall, we will have a cloutie tree. People will be able to breathe the names of their beloved departed into pieces of cloth and put them on a symbolic tree.

You will lose someone you can’t live without
Anne Lamott

You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly – that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.

“The Thing Is”
by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air,
heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

“Daily Prayer”

Grandmother, Grandfather,
Guardians of the four directions,
Great Spirit at the center of all things:
Thank you for this day and for our lives.
Thank you for the bounty and blessings and abundance that you provide for us to enjoy.
Thank you for the lessons that you place before us each day
Thank you for the vision to recognize these lessons for what they are.
Thank you for the wisdom to understand the meaning of these lessons for our lives,
and Thank you for the courage to live in this new understanding.

“All Souls”
by May Sarton

Did someone say that there would be an end,
And end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?
The cold bleak voices of the early morning
When all the birds are dumb and in dark November —
Remember and forget, forget, remember.
After the false night, warm true voices, wake!
Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,
Through the pale sunlight once more gravely speak.
Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
“Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven.”
Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
Are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited —
Only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.
Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel new-cherished, new forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.

“In Blackwater Woods”
by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving of the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: The fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

“Hold On”
by Nancy Wood

Hold on to what is good,
Even if it’s a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe,
Even if it’s a tree that stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do,
Even if it’s a long way from here.
Hold on to your life,
Even if it’s easier to let go.
Hold on to my hand,
Even if someday I’ll be gone away from you.

What do we become when we die?

What do we become
when we die?

Stars,
night,
leaves,
ash,
dirt-

Souls wandering
to help those
we wronged —

The great breath
of space
and light
and nothing?

Think
not just beyond this but here + there,
now + now-

What do we become
when we die?

Quiet
moving
bodiless
earthy
hope.

“Those who are dead are never gone”
by Birago Diop, African Traditional Religions

Those who are dead are never gone:
they are there in the thickening shadow.
The dead are not under the earth:
they are there in the tree that rustles,
they are in the wood that groans,
they are in the water that runs,
they are in the water that sleeps,
they are in the hut, they are in the crowd,
the dead are not dead.
Those who are dead are never gone:
they are in the breast of the woman,
they are in the child who is wailing,
and in the firebrand that flames.
The dead are not under the earth:
they are in the fire that is dying,
they are in the grasses that weep,
they are in the whimpering rocks,
they are in the forest,
they are in the house,
the dead are not dead.

“We Remember Them”
by Roland Gittlesohn

In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
we remember them;

In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
we remember them;

In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring,
we remember them;

In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
we remember them;

In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
we remember them;

When we are weary and in need of strength,
we remember them;

When we are lost and sick at heart,
we remember them;

When we have joys we yearn to share,
we remember them;

So as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us,
as we remember them.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Doing Justice

October 22, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 22, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

How does this part of our mission fit with the others? In preparation for our November congregational conversations about the mission, a few thoughts about justice and transformation.

Reading
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension. He merely brings out the hidden tension that is already alive. Last Summer when we had our open housing marches in Chicago, many of our white liberal friends cried out in horror and dismay: “You are creating hatred and hostility in the white communities in which you are marching, You are only developing a white backlash.” I could never understand that logic. They failed to realize that the hatred and the hostilities were already latently or subconsciously present. Our marches merely brought them to the surface ….

The white liberal must escalate his support for racial justice rather than de-escalate it. … The need for commitment is greater today than ever.

Sermon

The last part of our mission is “do justice.” Justice is love in action. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and yesterday Rep. Maxine Waters know that talking about it is not enough. We must get in the fight. Laws must be changed. The status quo is killing people.

Let me tell you about how I learned to be white in the era of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I heard people say “well, if they wouldn’t make themselves so unpleasant, they’d get a lot farther. They should go about asking for change gradually. They’re asking for too much. Then Dr King was shot dead, and my family in North Carolina was shocked. But quiet.

I was about 8 years old. One day on the way to school my mother pointed across a field and said “That’s the school for the little black children.” I remember that today because it struck me as amazing that I had never wondered where the black kids went to school. It hadn’t occurred to me to notice that there were only white kids at the Mulberry Street Elementary School. It was just the way things were. My mother took us to the city pool the first day it was integrated. We hadn’t been before. I remember the joy with which the children played in the water, the sunlight almost too bright. The situation felt fraught. Tense. I didn’t know why at the time.

There are models of cultural competency which describe the stages of that competency, and the one I’m using is from Milton Bennett. When I was 8, I was deeply in the first stage, where your world is small, and you don’t even really see people who are different from you. “Hm. Weird,” you might say, as you see cultural differences. I knew my culture. I came from missionaries to Pakistan, from Persian rugs and split-level houses, from private schools and academia. I came from a family where writing a book was the way to be special, to arrive. I came from church-going and horses and uncles who were doctors who would fix you up for free if you got measles. I came from family stories about the great-grandfather preacher who would visit and feed poor families, black and white, in a small southern town.

Later I grew into another stage of cultural development. The reversal stage. Having become aware of black culture, I was fascinated. My best friend in high school was from West Philadelphia. She was so much cooler than I was. I adored her. I prayed every night that I would wake up black. I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but I wished hard anyway. Better music, better language, more beautiful skin tone. And my father was all about civil rights. He was a ferocious civil rights fighter, not on the street, but in essays and sermons and speeches he was asked to make because he was on the 6 and 11 o’clock news. I came from a culture. Scots Irish academic/clergy class.

My perspective was still very much of the individual rather than the system. My boy cousins got in trouble with the law at least once in their lives throwing fireworks out of their car windows. When the police stopped one of them, a syringe had rolled out from under the back seat. It was from their dad’s doctor bag, but all of that got worked out at the police station. We didn’t know the reason we could laugh about it was because the boys were white and so were the police officers. We had the privilege of interacting with the authorities in the justice system, in the banking system, when applying for internships and jobs and being fairly certain that we’d be dealing with someone from our same race. If something didn’t go right, we had the privilege of never wondering whether the problem was our skin color or our race.

I could walk in neighborhoods in which I lived without anyone calling the police on “a suspicious person.” My sister can run after dark without people assuming she’s running away from something she did. I could shop by myself without someone following me around the store, thinking I might steal something.

When I’m in a grocery store for a few things I can put them in my shopping bag to carry them before paying without someone assuming I’m going to steal them. If I’m really feeling my privilege, I can grab a bottle of water and drink it while I shop, knowing that people will assume I’ll pay for it when I check out. Because I look like a nice lady. Part of that is my being white. I get the benefit of the doubt all the time. That’s the way things are. For me, the system is working pretty well. The best thing about it is I don’t even have to notice it if I don’t care to.

“The way things are” has different names. The patriarchy is what we say when we are talking about the privilege that accrues to men in our society and others. On Face Book this week, it’s becoming pretty clear that almost every woman in our culture has at some point been sexualized, harassed, assaulted in small ways. Many have been assaulted in awful ways. This sudden visibility of the situation has been painful. It only took a day for the articles to appear about women who abuse and harass men or other women, and how some men are harassed and assaulted sexually when they are very young. Yes, but it has happened to almost every woman. Sometimes we talk about it, and it becomes visible. For a while.

The way things are for white people here in the US is named the White Supremacy System. The US is not the only place this exists, but let’s talk about it as it is here.

It’s not a broken system. The system is working exactly the way it’s supposed to. It’s supposed to make people of color players of the game of life here play at an added level of difficulty. White Supremacy is not about individual racists, people who shout “Blood and Soil” and carry tikki torches from Lowes to protest removal of statues of Confederate generals. It’s a system that has exactly the effect it’s supposed to have. Sometimes the legislatures try to make it better. These days they are trying to make it worse through voter suppression, gerrymandering, abolishing affirmative action.

The White Supremacy System is all around us. It’s the air we breathe and the water we swim in. I don’t have to think about it if I don’t want to. One of my privileges as a white person is that I can engage when I’m moved to and disengage when I get tired. If I were a person of color I would not have the privilege of being able to turn it off. I would be dealing with it all the time, all around me and within me, as I battle internalized racism and the color prejudices within my own culture.

I have spent most of my time in a middle stage of cultural competence called minimization, where I minimized the cultural differences I saw. “Everyone is the same under the surface,” I would think, and we’re all just people.”

I traveled enough to be curious about other cultures, to understand something about how things were in Europe, the Middle East, Thailand, India. I knew there were big cities, skyscrapers and traffic and all, in Afghanistan, Nigeria, Kenya. Curiosity gets you to the stage where you understand that people from other cultures are as complex and individual as those from yours. You can’t imagine that all Latino and latina people are one way, all Black people think this one thing or that one, that all Native folks want this one thing or that one. If you were white, and someone told you “White people love unpaid internships, why is that a thing?” You might bristle. Although the web site “Stuff white people like” is very good for checking your reactivity as a white person. Unpaid internships, hummus, “My So-called Life,” Ray Bans, Grammar, among many other things. You can’t really stereotype individuals, but there are some cultural things you can recognize …

The stage I’m in now is that I know that things are better when minds from varying cultures have had input. People who speak different languages, have cultures different from mine, (and mine is fairly smack in the middle of the dominant white American culture) see things from a different point of view. The more points of view I can include, the better the end result. Diversity, in a church or in a field of corn, ensures sturdiness. If you plant the same kind of corn, or the same kind of potato, one disease can wipe out your whole crop. Lack of diversity equals weakness. In a community, If you’re all too similar, things get handled in the same old way.

We are going to have several “Teach-ins” here, run by our Change Team, a joint effort of the People of Color group and the White Allies. Look for the dates in upcoming newsletters. You might join the Dismantling Racism conversations here on Saturdays, come to the movies shown mostly on Fridays, or get involved in visiting prisoners at the detention centers.

If you are white, you’re not a terrible person. You can’t fix it by yourself, but you can begin to fix you.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Groundbreaking

October 15, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 15, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We celebrate our impending renovation with a symbolic groundbreaking, and we talk about other life situations which are a paradox of the already and the not yet, the comforting and the discomforting, preparing the way for the new.

This morning we are celebrating two things that go together wonderfully well. Our groundbreaking ceremony, which is a community experience of and affirmation of our moving ahead in the process of being a more welcoming congregation physically, and the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali. Diwali is about the defeat of ignorance, about lighting someone’s way home.

Unitarian Universalism is all about the Light of Truth. That is what our chalice stands for. The search for truth is at the forefront of our faith. We teach that the revelation of truth is ongoing. It wasn’t dropped down from somewhere all at once, self-contained, with all the answers to everything. There isn’t a revelation that stands, written in stone, but the Spirit of truth continues to reveal itself to us as we gather more knowledge and more experience as humans. The light grows. Our worship services contain pieces of the truth, as great writers and thinkers, and as the ministers and the congregation grasp them. We always say “We could be wrong,” which is a great truth in itself.

We know there are people who need truth, who are starving for it, people who have been harmed by ignorance. We know there are thirsty human souls longing to hear the message that there is worth and dignity inside every person. They have been made to feel worthless by their religion, or by their family, or by the human condition, which seems to be that we hurt inside in a thousand invisible ways. Some people need this faith, however flawed its members and ministers may be. We need one another, and we need those who will be drawn here in the future. We make room for them. We light the way for them.

“Prince Rama was the son of a great King, and was expected to become King himself one day. However his stepmother wanted her own son to become King, and tricked her husband into banishing Rama and his wife Sita to live in the forest. But this was no ordinary forest. This was the forest where demons lived, including Demon King Ravana. Ravana had twenty arms and ten heads. There were two eyes on each head and a row of sharp yellow teeth. When Ravana saw Sita he wanted her for himself and so decided to kidnap her. Ravana placed a beautiful deer into the forest. When Sita saw the deer she asked Rama if he could capture it for her so they could have it as a pet.

However when Rama was out of sight Ravana came swooping down in a chariot pulled by flying monsters and flew off with Sita. Sita, although afraid, was also clever. Being a princess she wore lots of jewelry and she dropped her jewels, piece by piece onto the ground to leave a trail for Rama. Sure enough Rama, realizing he had been tricked, discovered the trail, and also came upon his friend Hanuman, King of the Monkeys. Hanuman promised Rama he and all the monkeys would help Rama to find Sita and they searched the world looking for her. Eventually a monkey located Sita on a dark, isolated island, surrounded by rocks and stormy seas. Hanuman flew to Sita to make sure it really was her. She gave him her last precious pearl to give to Rama and prove it really was her and she had been found. The monkeys helped Rama for a second time by throwing stones and rocks into the sea until they had built a great bridge to the island.

Rama and his faithful army battled with the demons until they were victorious. Finally Rama took his wonderful bow and arrow, specially made to defeat all evil demons, and shot Ravana through the heart, killing him. There were huge celebrations when Rama and Sita returned to the kingdom. Everyone placed a light in their windows and doorways to show that the light of truth and goodness had defeated the darkness of evil and trickery.

To celebrate Diwali, across India people decorate with beautiful lights, and some keep the lights on in their homes for the five days of the festival. In Nepal, there is a tradition of keeping your door open during Diwali. Both are lovely instructions to us as we make our space welcoming.

Many of us are aware of the forest full of demons. We feel ourselves surrounded by fears, surrounded by a feeling of loneliness, of self-hatred, of addiction or despair. These demons clutch at us, sometimes we feel lost and unable to see a way forward. Then we have friends, the monkeys and bears in our lives, people who come searching for us, people who accompany us on our journey, who get us out of bad situations, people whose writings inspire us, whose deeds give us courage.

These people, these heroes and sheroes are the lights that light our way out of the forest, that light our way home. During the ground breaking, I am going to invite us to call out the names of these lights, these people, … Martin Luther King, Jr … Fannie Lou Hamer … Howard Thurman … Rabindranath Tagore … Flannery O’Connor …

Who has been a light on your way?

I’m going to ask the architect and the folks involved with other aspects of the construction along with the members of our building team to go out into the garden. This is where we will have the symbolic groundbreaking. It is tremendously exciting to break ground, but there is another aspect to a construction and renovation project. It’s a breaking. There is some violence to it. There isn’t a way to create something more welcoming without moving things we love, breaking some things we thought would always be there. I want to let you know that this garden will be moved, will be renewed. It won’t be exactly the same as it was. Many of us have loved it fiercely, and many have enjoyed it without thinking about it too much.

This is why we need courage to move forward. It’s not always comfortable to keep the door open, to keep the lights on for those who are on their way home.

Please call out the names of the people whose light illuminates your path, and, if you know them, the names of people who have given this church life to this moment.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Transformation through Service

October 8, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse & Leadership Team
October 8, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

How will you use your gifts? What if we were able to use our gifts to their full potential, and purposefully encourage others around us to do the same?

Call to Worship
Mother Teresa

Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service. Whatever form we are, able or disabled, rich or poor, it is not how much we do, but how much love we put into the doing; a lifelong sharing of love with others.

Reading
How Will You Use Your Gifts?
by Don Southworth

One of the first things I saw on my first day of seminary at Starr King School for the Ministry in August 1996 was the official school T-shirt. On the front of the shirt was a beautiful drawing of a sand dollar. I discovered the importance and meaning of the sand dollar later that morning during our opening worship service. Rebecca Parker, the president of Starr King, spoke poetically and movingly about the sand dollar’s history at the school and its symbolism for our time there. For decades incoming students have been given a sand dollar as a welcome gift in a ritual to honor the gifts we brought to the school and to represent the grace and mystery of our vocations to ministry. We were each invited to choose a sand dollar to take with us on our journeys.

With tears in my eyes, I prayerfully selected the sand dollar that I knew would be the perfect companion on my road to ministry. When I returned to my seat, and as I lovingly fondled it, my precious sand dollar shattered into several pieces and soon was nothing but sand dollar dust. I realized that this probably wasn’t a good omen for my future, so I snuck back to the basket to take another. Certain that nobody saw me, I slunk back to my seat and gently placed the new sand dollar in my pocket. Fifteen minutes later, when I went to touch my sacred sand dollar, I discovered it too was in pieces. Convinced that the Gods were telling me something about my choice to pursue the ministry, I quietly dumped my sand dollar dust into the garbage and wondered if seminary was the right place for me.

Fortunately, the T-shirt on the wall had writing on the back as well. It said: “How will you use your gifts?” Since sand dollars did not seem to be my thing, I hoped I could do a better job with that question. On that day, that question became one of the guiding lights of my life and ministry. How will you use your gifts? I have been blessed to be surrounded by faculty, friends, family, colleagues, and congregations committed to living that question with me. It is a question with the power to transform the world.

How will you use your gifts? Imagine what would happen if everyone of us committed to fully living out the answer to that question and helping others to do the same. Imagine if every person in the world overcame their doubts, fears, and oppressions and shared all their gifts.

We have the power to change and heal the world when we use our gifts to bless the world. And what better place to practice than in our religious communities, where we are encouraged to bring our unique talents, skills, passions, and dreams, and share them as widely as we can – even on those days when we feel as imperfect as a broken sand dollar.

You and I are miracles, my friends. We are packages of gifts that have never been seen before in the history of the world and will never be seen again. Our potential, our greatness, lie in how well we open our packages, our lives, and share them with other people. To paraphrase the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

Everybody can be great. Because everybody can share their gifts with the world. You don’t need a master of divinity degree to share your gifts. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to share your gifts with the world. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. (And maybe a pocket full of sand dollar dust!)

Sermon

Meg Barnhouse

(Sung)
Let the life if lead speak for me
Let the life if lead speak for me
When I’m lying in my grave
and there’s nothing left to say
Let the life if lead speak for me

Our Worship this morning is about Transforming Lives. Two members of this congregation will speak about their own lives, which have been transformed through service within this congregation.

One of my favorite theologians is the Baptist minister Howard Thurman. He said

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Most of the church members you see participating in worship this morning are members of the First UU “Transformation Through Service” team. They are here to invite you into transformation. If you care to participate, they have interviewers who sit with you for about an hour to ask you questions about you. This morning you are invited to think about a word or two that describes a gift you bring to this community. You might be a good teacher, a listener, a builder, an idea person, a detail person, or all of the above. This program is an invitation to transformation through service, so no one is asking you to sign your gift words. They will be collected at the end of the sermon time and some of them will be read aloud so we can be encouraged by the many gifts among us.

Tomas Medina

If I had my way, we’d change the order of our mission statement. I’d swap “do justice” and “transform lives” so that our mission statement read, “We gather in community to nourish our souls, do justice and transform lives:” In my experience, that I’m about to share with you, it is in doing justice that lives are transformed.

When I first walked through the doors of First UU, three and a half years, ago. I came for the worship service, to nourish my soul.

And my soul was nourished. It felt really good to be surrounded by people who believed in the same things I did, our 7 principles, and who drew on our 7 sources to inform their spiritual journey.

When I took the path to membership class here, I was told that there was a need for ushers and that being an usher was a good way to start becoming part of the community.

So my very first act of service here was to usher. And I did it for selfish reasons, to become part of the community. And it worked.. One Sunday, while I was ushering, Rev Mari walked up to me and asked me if I was going to come to the newly formed Alphabet Soup group, for people who identify as belonging to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning community. I joined.

Another Sunday Rev Mari asked me if I was going to be part of the Adult religious education group, that was going through the new Welcoming Curriculum to help ensure that we continue to be welcoming to the LGBTQ community. I joined.

Another Sunday, Rev Mari asked me if I was going to be part of the newly formed People of Color group. I joined.

As an aside, if I just read the announcements in our order of service, Rev Mari woldn’t have had to take the extra step of telling me about all these opportunities. But I grew up Catholic and at the end of mass, the priests always read the announcements. I kind of figured if there was something I should know it’d be announced from the pulpit. That is not the case here.

Eventually, people other than Rev Mari starting asking me to do things. I became the facilitator of the Alphabet Soup Grop, I served on the intern committee for our most recent ministerial intern, Susan Yarborough. And, I’m a steward for this year’s pledge drive.

But it was my encounter with Peggy Morton, that really transformed my life, she told me about an opportunity to visit immigrant women being held in detention , at Hutto, about 45 minutes from here.

I am a child of immigrants and very much appreciate the opportunities this country has given to my family and me. For the longest time, I’ve wanted to give something back And, I’ve been very bothered by the fact that many immigrants to this country don’t receive the welcome that my parents were given when they immigrated in the 1950’s.

I began to visit women at Hutto once or twice a month All I did was converse with them, about simple things like their families back home or in the States. And, about incredible things such as their harrowing trips from their home countries to the states and the reasons why they came, which was often out of fear for their lives after seeing family members killed by gangs.

Talking with these women was humbiling. I very much admired their courage and resilience. It also made me appreciate how easy my life is because of the fact that I was born in the US, through no effort on my part.

All of the activities I’ve mentioned have been transformative for me. Before moving to Austin, I lived in NYC for 25 years. When I lived there I was a very appreciative consumer. I took advantage of much of what the city offers: theater, restaurants, night life, etc. My time at First UU has made me much more into a creator. I feel like I make experiences now as much as I consume them.

I’ve saved the most important transformative experience, I’ve had for last. This June, inspired by my time at General Assembly, our annual gathering of UUs, I took my first pro bono immigration case as an attorney. I represented a lesbian woman from Guatemala who had fled with her girlfriend because of threats made on their lives. When the women crossed the border into the US, they were caught by ICE and put into detention, aka jail, at Hutto. The girlfriend voluntarily deported herself back to Guatemal unawae of her rights to seek asylum. My client, on the other hand, did file for asylum. Though American Gateways, a not for profit organization that provides legal help to immigrants, I represented this women in immigration court. I’m happy to say that on August 23, the immigration judge handed down her decision and granted my client asylum. My client is now out of detention, living and working in Austin, without fear of being deported.

This was the single most transformative event of my life. Last year in a class I’m taking here at First UU, we were asked the question as to what is the thing in your life that you feel driven to do, that you just can’t not do. I answered that I’ve struggled with this my whole life. I felt like I should have a calling but never had one. I can now say, I have one. Using my legal education to help new immigrants to this county, is now something that I cannot not do.

Currently, I’m helping with our guest in Sanctuary, Alerio’s legal case. And it feels great to be able to provide the service that I feel called to, in the same place that I call my spiritual home. I feel whole, in a way that I’ve never felt before.

My point in telling you all this is to encourage you to move beyond just attending worship and start providing a service that you feel at least a teensy bit of a calling to. Or, if you already giving service, first of all, thank you. And secondly, if you fee so called take a leap and try something you have never done before. I acknowledge that we’re all busy and it totally normal to resist giving up more of your time. Believe me, I’ve often had that feeling myself. But, I promise you that in providing service to others your life will be transformed, in ways big and small. And just as important as the transformation, your soul and the souls of those your serve, will be nourished.

Carolyn Gremminger

So, how is serving others transformational?

My path of service at First UU has transformed my relationship with our community: from being a consumer to being a co creator. My energy has been heightened. I now purposefully try to see how I can use my gifts to become an innovator in service here and how I can connect with others to enhance our church community, and its efforts to better serve Austin and our world.

As writer Thomas Moore has said, “this process is not so much something we do, as it is something done to us”

Of course, it is important that I am clear on my motivation and attitude.

I try to enter with an open heart and mind and create a loving, accepting place for others. This effort sometimes open up new avenues inside of me.

If I draw from my Source, my Ground of Being, this enables me to have more hope and energy

“We all have a unique gift of service to contribute, and with time and persistence, it becomes apparent, by finding that “sacred service” the work that helps others and nourishes ourselves, we find how to “begin with ourselves, but not end with ourselves”- Roger Walsh

I have found that service can be transformational, when done mindfully and intentionally. There is a joyful path of service, a conscious spiritual path.

Not out of a sense of obligation, or for the ego or personal gain, not attached to outcomes.

A specific commitment to care for a need in our circles of concern.

I would like to share an example of how I was a beneficiary of someone else’s apparent path of service. I was going through a biopsy procedure, a few years ago and I was very afraid.

I did not take anyone with me to the appointment at the Hospital.

A volunteer approached me in the waiting room, and asked if she could accompany me. I agreed.

The reason it was scheduled at the hospital was due to the fact that the area to be biopsied was close to my rib cage. I decided to be a brave solder, as usual, and did not accept my doctor’s offer of a local anesthetic.

The volunteer stayed right by my side. As the procedure went on, I came to understand my doctor’s offer. The pain was intense and I was obviously distressed. The volunteer held my hand as the doctor administered the anesthetic. Tears were rolling down my face…. I grasped my helpers hand and looked up at her through my tears and said “thank you” and I will never forget her response…”there is no where else I would rather be.

This happened years ago, and I have never forgotten it. I don’t know the lady’s name, and I would guess she is a cancer survivor. I have always hoped that her act of service helped her in some way. She surely helped me that day, and I was a total stranger.

It can be an inspirational path, in service of creation, done in gratitude and can result in a more joyful experience of life.

You might find that the people you are attempting to serve can help you, teach you things.

I can honestly tell you that I have been personally transformed by my path of service here at First UU.

When I first entered these doors 15 years ago, I felt pretty lost and isolated. I now have support on my spiritual journey in community. I feel at home here.

Being a lay leader has introducing me to people and ideas that have changed my life at a profound level. I see myself in a different way today, more confident and loved. My mind and heart have been opened to a whole new realm of possibilities and hope. I now know that I am a valued member here whose talents and presence are needed. It has truly been a life changing experience.

In our community, our tribe, in the crucible for the creative, to quote Meg’s recent sermon. I experience so much fun and meaning and I have made some really dear friends through service on the Board of Trustees, cochairing the Public Affairs forum and helping out with the theater group and gallery openings.

Together we have accomplished great things…I can’t wait til the next service opportunity!!!! J

First UU is a safe place to practice new skills.

You can risk failure and be ok. Grow from the risk, in a non shaming environment. You can take a leap of faith here!

We are all in need of caring and care at certain points in our lives.

One could ask the question, who is really being served?

My reality is that I receive so much more than I give.

There are so many ways to get involved in service work here both large and small, short and long term projects and efforts.

So, if you are interested, how can you find your calling, your “Path of Service”

You could ask yourself:

What makes me come alive? What causes am I passionate about? What energizes you? What is needed?

Be open to the gifts that service can give you. The Process open up new possibilities, talents, feelings, sensitivities, a new and profound sense of belonging. It can unearth a new identity.

What we do in this life matters, for ourselves, our loved ones, and the community at large…. We can help to build a “heaven on earth”.

So, what do you say friends, let’s all work together, to continue to build Beloved Community .

Thanks!

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.